1. Field of the Invention
This disclosure relates generally to smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, wireless communications systems, and wireless positioning systems. More specifically, this disclosure provides a combination device, method for locating a smoke alarm and notifying a dispatch center utilizing wireless telecommunications and position location systems.
2. Description of Related Art
Fire is a widespread and ongoing threat to public safety and homeland security. Fire is known for generating smoke, which often contains many poisonous elements including carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is also known as the “silent killer,” due to its tasteless, odorless, colorless, and poisonous properties. Carbon monoxide is produced by the incomplete burning of solid, liquid, and gaseous fuels. Many appliances fueled with natural gas, liquefied petroleum, oil, kerosene, coal, charcoal, or wood may produce poisonous carbon monoxide. In addition, running automobiles, recreational vehicles, and other combustion engines produce poisonous carbon monoxide.
Detecting fire and dangerous levels of smoke and carbon monoxide at the earliest stages, alerting building occupants for rapid evacuation, and notifying 911 emergency dispatch operators to summon emergency response personnel are key factors for public safety. However, delay or failure of any one of the key factors dramatically increases the dangers of smoke and fire. Accordingly, reduced physical injury, reduced loss of life, and reduced property damaged are all dependent upon building occupants safely evacuating a building and quickly contacting a emergency dispatch operator to summon further assistance.
Devices for sensing dangerous levels of smoke and carbon monoxide and initiating an alarm are presently available. Single station smoke alarms are available in single sensor units, or combined with carbon monoxide sensors in one alarm.
Although the above-mentioned single station alarms provide many important features, many drawbacks exist. For instance, in larger buildings containing multiple rooms or levels, smoke may be detected in remote or unoccupied areas for unknown periods of time before the occupants are alerted, allowing fire to spread. Furthermore, heavy sleeping, intoxicated, persons on medications, and high-risk (e.g., children, elderly, physically challenged, sensory-impaired) occupants may not hear or otherwise respond to the activated alarm sound before being overcome. Even alarms equipped with a visual alarm or strobe may not awaken this category of occupants due to the aforementioned and other design limitations.
To alleviate the above and other shortcomings, federal, state, and local safety and fire codes may require that newer residences install multiple alarms equipped interconnection means for multiple alarm activation. Alarms are presently available that allow multiple alarms to be interconnected within a building, so when any one of the interconnected alarm senses carbon monoxide or smoke, other interconnected alarms are activated.
Despite solving some of the problems of single station smoke or carbon monoxide alarms, drawbacks exist with interconnected alarms. For example, although interconnected alarms may alert building occupants to smoke in remote or unoccupied areas, if the building is unoccupied or vacant, the danger often goes undetected as the fire spreads to out of control. Only in the event neighbors or other observers haphazardly notice the burning building will emergency response personnel be contacted. Partially alleviating these drawbacks, smoke alarms are presently available that incorporate a landline telephone link.
Other hard-wired or wireless interconnected smoke detectors are part of household or commercial security systems, which are primarily designed for intrusion detection and other security related applications. These systems may employ numerous components, including of a separate wall-mounted control panel, keypad, wireless receiver, and various wireless security sensors. These systems often comprise a landline telephone with auto-dialer connected to a public switched telephone network, which then automatically notifies a central station monitoring facility upon alarm activation, who then retransmits the alert to a 911 operator. Other security systems provide a separate component that contains either primary or back-up wireless transmitters for alerting a commercial central station monitoring facility.
Despite their advantages, shortcomings of integrated security and fire alarm systems containing smoke detectors are numerous. First, such systems are cost prohibitive for fire or carbon monoxide protection, due to the numerous components and sizable installation costs. Because of these costs, non-homeowners or persons with low-income or marginal credit ratings may be unable to afford installation costs and monthly service fees. Second, these systems require skilled technicians to install, test, and maintain. Third, many of these systems may not include detectors with the basic security system package. Furthermore, these systems often employ a separate landline or wireless auto-dialer component, which requires the user to subscribe to separate landline or wireless telephone service, and utilize off-site commercial central station monitoring facility, requiring additional monthly fees. Still another disadvantage is an off-site central station monitoring facility must retransmit any alarm events to a 911 operator.
Other integrated security and fire alarm systems exist that include additional wireless notification, control, and access features using a variety of communication networking mediums, oftentimes a specially designed, proprietary network. These systems often employ various intermediate communications relay or gateway components to communicate with the security or fire alarm system. However, these relays or gateways are physically separated from the detection component, leaving the relay component vulnerable to fire damage before detection. These systems also require that emergency information (e.g., the address of the protected premises) be entered in prior to use in order to determine the location of the alarm event.
A further limitation of all of the above-mentioned smoke detectors, is that they are not specifically designed for installation in building structures undergoing construction, or an effective means for fire monitoring in vacant residences or commercial buildings. In most residential and commercial buildings under construction, there is no means for automated fire monitoring, often no telephone service, and often no registered street address. The workers on the construction site and persons in the immediate vicinity are the primary means for monitoring potential fire dangers. Because such buildings may be vacant during the off-work hours, a fire may burn unnoticed before it rages out of control, causing danger to workers, fire damage to the said building, fire damage to adjacent properties, and increased danger to emergency response personnel.
Although security systems that include smoke detectors have the ability to automatically summon assistance through a intermediate commercial central station monitoring facility, a key drawback of such systems and existing single and multiple station smoke alarms is their lack of effective and timely means for automatic and direct notification to a 911 operator, often referred to as a 911 public safety answering point, of the specific nature and location of the fire emergency.
Wireless telecommunications network systems, often referred to as cellular or PCS networks, along with mobile cellular telephones, are presently available. Aside from being a revolutionary innovation for mobile voice and data communications, many other uses exist, such as determining the geographic location of a mobile cellular telephone. Wireless position location is important for a wide-range of applications including mobile position determination and emergency services.
Most landline telephones in the United States utilizing the public switched telephone network have enhanced 911 service capabilities. Most of these landline enhanced 911 systems have the capability to provide the public safety answering points with a call back number and a physical address of the telephone when calling 911. However, with a growing number of households canceling their landline telephone service and choosing cellular-only telephone or internet telephone service, landline enhanced 911 service becomes unavailable to those households. In most cases, using a cellular telephone or internet telephone to call 911 requires the caller to inform the emergency dispatch operator of the nature and physical location of the emergency.
Due to these issues and a dramatic increase in 911 calls originating from cellular and internet telephones, the U.S. Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) enacted regulatory mandates requiring wireless telecommunications carriers to upgrade and modify their cellular and PCS network infrastructures, and make appropriate upgrades to cellular telephones to provide wireless 911 service similar to landline enhanced 911 service. The FCC recently issued an order requiring internet telephone service providers to upgrade their enhanced 911 systems as well.
The efforts of wireless carriers resulted in a number of wireless location system concepts, generally referred to as wireless enhanced 911, to pinpoint or track the location of a cellular telephone during an emergency. The FCC mandates consist of Phase I and Phase II standards that require various levels of position location accuracy.
The Phase I standard generally requires a carrier to provide the closest cell site/sector. Phase II network and handset-based concepts generally pinpoint or track the location of cellular telephones by using either upgraded cellular/PCS network infrastructure, or equipping the cellular telephones with a Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite receiver. It is understood that because neither the network nor handset based wireless position location concepts provide 100% accuracy in all environments, hybrid wireless position location concepts are presently available that combine the advantages of both network and handset-based Phase II position location standard.
However, the aforementioned wireless position location concepts (particularly GPS) have shortcomings when used in urban and indoor environments. To alleviate these shortcomings, other wireless position location concepts utilizing analog and/or digital broadcast television signals are presently available. These improved position location concepts use high power signals, lower frequencies, and wider bandwidth to provide a faster and more accurate position location fix. This wireless position location concept is presently being deployed in several areas for use with 911 emergency services.
It is worth mentioning that the aforementioned wireless position location concepts are primarily designed and utilized for determining the location of voice-only cellular telephones, although many other devices or uses are possible. As previously noted above with other 911 systems, the intended use of wireless enhanced 911 location involves the user seeking emergency assistance to manually enter the “9-1-1” numeric sequence or some variation into the cellular handset keypad, thereby contacting a emergency 911 dispatch operator to report the emergency. Once a connection is made, the user verbally articulates the nature of the emergency to a emergency dispatch operator. Although mobile cellular telephones are an important tool for general safety and emergency reporting, they still require a human user to operate, and are not specially designed for fire safety.
Another issue is that in order to utilize a cellular telephone to call 911 or use wireless enhanced 911 emergency location services, a user is often required to purchase or acquire a mobile cellular telephone, and enter into a subscriber contract with a wireless carrier, which requires an activation fee and monthly service fees. However, persons with low-income or with marginal credit ratings may be unable to afford a cellular subscriber contract. To help alleviate this problem, the federal regulations require that users have access to 911-only, or non-service initialized cellular phones that allow such users to contact a 911 dispatcher. However, these cellular telephones are not designed for automatic notification to 911 operators in fire or carbon monoxide emergencies.
As described above, presently available conventional smoke and combination smoke/carbon monoxide alarms are primarily used for alerting building occupants with an audible or visual alarm, and presently available integrated security and fire alarm systems require an intermediate central station monitoring facility, but provide neither a means for automatic and direct contact to a 911 dispatch operator (i.e., a 911 public safety answering point), nor a means for automatic wireless enhanced 911 position location determination. Conventional smoke alarms also require that evacuating building occupants or bystanders use voice-only landline, cellular, or internet telephones to contact a emergency 911 dispatch operator to report a impending fire or carbon monoxide emergency.